Damian Thompson is Editor of Telegraph Blogs and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph. He was once described by The Church Times as a "blood-crazed ferret". He is on Twitter as HolySmoke. His latest book is The Fix: How addiction is taking over your world. He also writes about classical music for The Spectator.

How the Catholic bishops lose arguments: more wisdom from Splintered Sunrise

My new favourite Catholic blog, Splintered Sunrise, really does understand the cosy alliances and muddled thinking of the Bishops of England and Wales. As I did yesterday, I'm going to leave you with an extract from a recent post that's based – I suspect – on first-hand knowledge of the Magic Circle's modus vivendi:

The Bishops' Conference-New Labour relationship, though, has other elements to it as well, which have come to mute the Church’s voice as its leaders have sought influence. Now, of course the bishops will have to deal with whomever is in power and build up relationships with them. Vincent Nichols, a Scouser and therefore not one of the world’s natural Tories, has been spotted hobnobbing with the Conservative Christian Fellowship; no doubt feelers have gone out to the few Catholics left in the Lib Dems, although neither Charlie Kennedy nor David Laws has that much influence these days.

Lobbying ministers is fine, but lobbying ministers at the expense of any other methods, like, oh, making a public argument, is not. When the Sexual Orientation Regulations were going through parliament and the threat to the adoption agencies became clear, the word from Eccleston Square was “we’ve spoken to Mr Tony and he assures us we’ll be all right”. When the recent Children, Schools and Families Bill was going through, the line was “we’ve spoken to Ed Balls and he assures us we’ll be all right”. And when the assurances turned to dust? Having eschewed making the argument in public in favour of talking to ministers, the bishops came to the argument late and just looked completely unreasonable. Losing an argument is fine, but losing an argument by default through not turning up until the last minute, and doing this repeatedly, is not fine.

Perhaps a lesson could be learnt from Stonewall, who are also extremely close to New Labour and have gained so much from government largesse as to be effectively a quango, but who still do the basic stuff of lobbying MPs, working the media and so on.